Review of Japanese Story (2003) by Melissa P — 14 Mar 2005

[font=Arial]I had a hard time figuring out whether Toni Colette was overacting in this film, and, if so, whether it was because she knew the whole piece lacked chemistry. When I watched this movie I had kgaard's Sideways review resonating in my head: basically, the writing was poor and didn't bring the characters together. We never really got to see how or why a relationship developed between the two main characters, and even when they were isolated in a convenient emotional petri dish (being stranded together in one of Australia's remotest areas), I still didn't think the script clicked along. Sometimes, I'm content with this kind of oversight if there's enough chemistry between the performers, or a weird kind of schism that makes a relationship interesting. But this relationship had neither quality.

The DVD included some deleted scenes, and we realised that when they deleted some scenes, the director forgot to compensate by removing references to those scenes in the rest of the film. The deleted scenes didn't give any overall impression of one version of the story being any better than another...and the characters were pretty one-dimensional. I found a heavy-handed treatment of the "mortality issue" at the beginning of the film extremely annoying, too, especially once the plot began to unfold.

The editing lacked sparkle - at one stage, Toni's character is driving back to town alone, distressed, but instead of overlapping scenes of distress as a montage that might've carried some weight, each clip fades to black rather unconvincingly. I also disliked the use of music in this film, as well as Colette's character's weird turnaround about Japanese people that's never properly explained.

On the plus side, the twist in the tale is fairly severe, there are one or two shining moments of acting (I exclude the "Baird" character from that point), and some great scenery.

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